Most modern buildings are built with security systems, emergency systems, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, all of which have many sensors, fans, values, and actuators. These systems together are commonly referred to as building automation systems (BAS). Many of these devices are controlled by microcontroller or microprocessor located in field panels. The programming of each panel is often unique based upon the different devices coupled to the panel. The initial provisioning of a BAS takes multiple hours to layout the design, develop the programming for the panels and other programmable devices, program the devices, tweak the devices, and test the devices and programs. The configuration of the BAS is typically stored in a database accessible by the BAS. Over time, additional changes and modification occur to the BAS and its corresponding database. These changes and modification often occur with different naming conventions and descriptions resulting in similar devices in the BAS using different naming conventions for equipment and data points in the BAS. Thus, in some BAS the naming conventions are not rigidly defined and enforced allowing strings to be used as labels, i.e. “weak naming.”
Often different types of tools, such as fault detection tools and performance analysis tools require knowledge of subsets of points (physical and logical elements of a BAS) and hardware subsystems in the BAS to be identified. Further, information about the function and meaning of points and associated meta-data is often required to give meanings for system analytics and such information is not typically embedded in traditional BASs. The identification of such subsets and meta-data is a manual process that is prone to errors due to weak naming conventions and typing used in configuring the BAS.
Known approaches at identification of subsets of a BAS require a strong naming convention and just do not work with a weak naming convention (user defined labels, strings, and identifiers.) In view of the foregoing, there is an ongoing need for systems, apparatuses and methods for correctly identifying items in a BAS database associated with subsystems when weak naming conventions are employed.